I’m no birder, but I’d wager that this duck hawk (and apparent Capp Street resident) is officially badass. Glenn Nevill has the story, and a bunch more pictures — many of them CLOSEUPS — right here. He also vows to keep a watchful eye on the beast, so stay tuned for further developments.

I saw this on the side of a gumball machine outside Val 16 Market. It is a bright orange baby head with gumballs or marbles or atoms or something in its cranial cavity. Wha!? I made it the wallpaper on my phone, and my phone has never been happier.

SFGate just put up a lengthy report on the pros and cons of the city’s gang injunction zone effort. In it, we hear from city officials as well as hardscrabble kids living hardscrabble lives:

“We can’t go back to our neighborhood where we grew up,” said DeLeon, who now lives in Oakland and has an older brother on the injunction list. “I can’t see my family and have a barbecue.”

Herrera and police gang officers see a different possible moral to DeLeon’s story. They believe the injunction may provide gang members with an antidote to peer pressure – an excuse to avoid people and situations that once brought trouble.

For Sarah Palin, Saturday Night Live gets Tina Fey out of retirement. No such love for Matt Gonzalez: When Weekend Update’s anchor asks the guy playing Ralph Nader about his running mate, Nader pulls out a Spanish-speaking sock puppet named Manuel. Link.

This week, Mission Street Food enters a cocoon for a period of hibernation. Next week, it will emerge as a beautiful new butterfly. According to the official blog:

We’re announcing a new format for Mission Street Food: each week, we’ll feature a local guest chef/cook, who will offer his or her own dishes in addition to our regular menu.

To make this change possible, we’ll be moving from the truck into an actual restaurant. We’ve been talking with some local restaurants about sharing space, and we’ll announce the details in a few days. We’ll be closed this week for planning and will re-open somewhere in the Mission on November 6.

Link. This sounds great, but will the sandwiches be as fun to eat sitting at a table, indoors? Will it still be street food?

Mission Loc@l reports on Wednesday’s big Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid of the SRO above Taqueria Cancun (among other locations), a raid that resulted in a number of alleged racketeers and murderers behind bars and many area residents and activists up in arms over the tactics used:

At 4:45 a.m. on Wednesday morning the residents of the Prita Hotel, at 2284 Mission Street, awoke abruptly to the sound of a smoke bomb exploding on the hotel roof.Moments later, more than 30 police, SWAT and immigration officials stormed the building with guns drawn, residents said.

Lots more, including a wealth of criticism, here. And the SFGate coverage looks at the full scope of the operation, including busts as far away as Reno. Thanks, Mitch!

Carlos Reyes just put up a post titled Skateboarding’s Not a Competition. Ostensibly, it’s about skateboarding, but it contains good advice for all of us creative types in the neighborhood. Here, he talks a bit about himself and his homies:

We don’t care about skills. If something sick happens, we’re stoked, we don’t get bummed that we can’t or can do the same trick. It’s just a shared experience we all have. But anyways, it doesn’t really matter to me who’s better than me or who I’m better than. That has never crossed my mind. If I skate with rippers, that’s rad and it’s fun, but it’s also the same fun as I’ll have if I skate with beginners or whatever. I don’t pay attention to who’s doing what because when you start to, the fun starts to go away.

First off, the weather’s supposed to be good, so there’s no reason not to just lie in the park all day. That said, there’s lots going on this Saturday:

The Really Really Free Market of course takes place in Dolores Park, so attending requires little travel. This edition is a special celebration, honoring the life and times of activist and RRFM champion Kirsten Brydum. Expect food, entertainment, activities and lots and lots of FREE. Though the event goes from Noon to 6pm, funcheapSF reports that at some point, the entire party proceeds down to Clarion Alley for the next bit of fun…

This year’s Clarion Alley Block Party! The Myopenbar.com newsletter chose it as this week’s featured item, and felt the need to say nothing more than, “1000 tattooed youngsters in an alley, drinking / 12pm-8pm.” See you there!